Ratko Mladic arrested...

The last big fish from the Bosnian war was caught today in Serbia. Ratko Mladic was the Chief of the Republic of Srpska Army during the 1992-1995 war and was indicted for war crimes by the International Tribunal in The Hague in 1995 for his alleged role in the siege against Sarajevo and the Srebrenica genocide. His name kind of means "warring youngster" so it is interesting that is the life that he ended up with...

His arrest has been expected since the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was arrested in July 2008, but it has been a long time coming. He was hiding out under another identity and this morning was captured by Serbian Special Forces and his identity confirmed through DNA analysis. It is definitely him! He will now be sent to The Hague to stand trial.

This will help Serbia to finally enter into talks to join the European Union, as this was one of the preconditions to those talks: that the war criminals be found and arrested. Interestingly enough, Serbia has always officially denied that Karadzic and Mladic were still in Serbia, but in the end both of them were found to be living there under different identities. Although I believe that this is good news, in the long run his arrest is just the beginning of a long and very drawn out trial...so not much to rejoice about really...